Kaadalan and the politics of resignification : fashion, violence and the body
Document Type
Journal article
Source Publication
Journal of Arts and Ideas
Publication Date
1-1-1996
Issue
29
First Page
5
Last Page
26
Publisher
Tulika Print Communication Services
Abstract
The song 'Mukkaala Muqabla', from the Tamil film Kaadalan (Loverboy), has been the biggest hit of the year, perhaps of the decade. The peculiar voice of Mano has been resonating in cinema halls, living rooms, streets, and video coaches across the nation. The visual sequence of the song — which dominated various TV count-down shows such as Superhit Muqabla, BPL Oye and Philips Top Ten — is quite fantastic, even bizarre. A pastiche on spaghetti westerns, the sequence opens with the hero — his hair and beard bleached blonde — sitting on a horse with a noose around his neck and the bad guys about to shoot the horse. The heroine gallops into the frame with a gun and shoots off the rope to liberate the hero. Then begins the dance, performed with great élan by Prabhudeva. The sequence itself is a strip of narrative very much in the MTV genre, and has no apparent link to the larger narrative of the film. The song/dance sequence in Indian films has always been a relatively autonomous block, one of the requirements of the dominant form of manufacture rather than a diegetic necessity. This tendency of the song/dance sequence toward autonomy has been intensified in recent years by the competition of television and the MTV genre as well as by the market opened up by them. So elaborately orchestrated dance sequences, each representing an autonomous strip of narrative, have become an imperative for the survival of the film industry.
Print ISSN
09705309
Publisher Statement
Copyright © 1996 Tulika Print Communication Services
Access to external full text or publisher's version may require subscription.
Additional Information
This article also published in R. S. Vasudevan (Ed.) (2000), Making meaning in Indian cinema (pp. 191-214). Dehli: Oxford University Press.
Full-text Version
Publisher’s Version
Language
English
Recommended Citation
Dhareshwar, V., & Niranjana, T. (1996). Kaadalan and the politics of resignification: Fashion, violence and the body. Journal of Arts and Ideas, (29), 5-26.